Honorverse favorite one-liners

roseandheather wrote:Also known as the moment I fell irrevocably in love with Dame Estelle Matsuko. (At least, I think that was the moment. It might have been earlier....)


They wereso flawless together and I love them together so much and I need them to reunite so badly and we won't discuss my Honor/Estelle fantasies....


....I'm just going to go take my fantasies to my bunk and, er, "deal with them appropriately."



*innocent whistle*

Honor and Estelle, sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G...

...whoops?

Whoop whoop aieyyyyyyyy...splat!
OUCH!
Damn limb broke!

Must beg forgiveness and indulgence.
This is nowhere near a one-liner, but the way Theisman lovingly, yet severely, admonishes Honor stops the press!

“Oh, stop it!” Thomas Theisman snapped, and Honor’s head snapped around in surprise at the genuine anger in his voice.
“No, you could not have ‘just taken the fire’!” the Republic’s Secretary of War told her sharply. “And if you had done something that stupid, you’d deserve to be broken for it!”
“But—”
“Don’t you ‘but’ me! You didn’t know—you couldn’t know—if they’d come up with some kind of fire control fix we’d never heard of before. You had no right, not one shred of a moral justification, to risk the lives of personnel under your command just because somebody on the other side had done something suicidal! Your responsibility is to your people, not theirs! It’s your job to neutralize an enemy before he kills them, and you’d damned well better do it if you’re going to be worthy of the uniform you wear!”
His brown eyes blazed, and she tasted the white-hot fury, the total sincerity, behind them.

cthia wrote:Must beg forgiveness and indulgence.
This is nowhere near a one-liner, but the way Theisman lovingly, yet severely, admonishes Honor stops the press!

“Oh, stop it!” Thomas Theisman snapped, and Honor’s head snapped around in surprise at the genuine anger in his voice.
“No, you could not have ‘just taken the fire’!” the Republic’s Secretary of War told her sharply. “And if you had done something that stupid, you’d deserve to be broken for it!”
“But—”
“Don’t you ‘but’ me! You didn’t know—you couldn’t know—if they’d come up with some kind of fire control fix we’d never heard of before. You had no right, not one shred of a moral justification, to risk the lives of personnel under your command just because somebody on the other side had done something suicidal! Your responsibility is to your people, not theirs! It’s your job to neutralize an enemy before he kills them, and you’d damned well better do it if you’re going to be worthy of the uniform you wear!”
His brown eyes blazed, and she tasted the white-hot fury, the total sincerity, behind them.

That whole goddamn speech.

I have a lot of feelings about that speech.

TOMMY MY DARLING BOY YOU BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL MAN I LOVE YOU SO MUCH IT HURTS.

Thomas Edward Theisman is done watching people die who don't have to.

cthia wrote:Something in ART that I'm more than a bit irked about...

Her pain was almost worse because Grand Fleet’s casualties had been so light. She’d learned long ago that every death took its own tiny bite out of her soul, yet she’d also learned the lesson she’d wanted the Sollies to learn. Wars cost. They cost starships, and they cost billions of dollars, and they cost lives. No matter how well you planned, how hard you trained, they cost lives, and she’d been incredibly fortunate to escape with “just” two thousand dead, most in her screening LACs, and minor, readily repairable damage to eleven of her own superdreadnoughts.
That was still two thousand dead men and women too many, though...

I can't stop thinking that someone dropped the ball here. Why did anyone have to die in the GA? No other tactics could have been thought up to prevent the SLN from getting within missile range?

I simply feel those two-thousand lives were wasted all for naught!

The Cataphracts have just as much total theoretical range as, say, a Mk. 16. That is, with a suitably long ballistic phase they can eventually reach just about any target the firing ship can see. Will they be very effective? No. Will lots and lots of them be wasted? Assuredly. But if you fire lots and lots and lots and LOTS of them (which Filaretta's fleet did), then you are still going to score some hits, most of which will be suffered by the screening units. And a LAC, unfortunately, cannot survive very many hits by warheads that heavy.

The LACs are the screen and they were deployed in the anti-missile role. For the most part they have to be between the two fleets in order to have reasonable fireing solutions on the incomming SLN missiles. Perhaps ont on the direct axis but close enough so that they are shooting down the throat of the incomming weapons.
There were thousands and thousands of SLN missiles coming and they were being engaged by RMN ECM.
A lot of them were going to be breaking lock on whatever targeting they initially had when launched and actively looking for new targets. The missiles don't "care" what the size of the target is, just that it meets the criteria of "not an SLN ship" or something close to that. We are often give the descripton of missiles wandering off after loosing lock. Of course they are "wandering" at a fair amount of speed and going faster all the time until the drive shuts down.
Remember that the SLN officer who flushed the pods while under nanite control put a cloud of weapons in the air. The RMN and RHN responce was going to be massive ECM and counter missiles. Thats a lot of stuff, both solid and electronic, flying around. As the individual SLN ships started fireing they had the initial targeting they had been sent (we presume) from the flagship but then they were on their own as far as individual fire control and for the SLN that was already almost down to shooting where the computers thought the original targets might or were soon to be in the fog of countermeasures.

Given the volume of fire and what seems to have been all of those SLN ships pumping weapons almost in the "general direction" of the Honor's primary defensive formation, what is the most surprizing is the low number of LACs that took hits (and most any hit would kill one).

runsforcelery wrote:
The Cataphracts have just as much total theoretical range as, say, a Mk. 16. That is, with a suitably long ballistic phase they can eventually reach just about any target the firing ship can see. Will they be very effective? No. Will lots and lots of them be wasted? Assuredly. But if you fire lots and lots and lots and LOTS of them (which Filaretta's fleet did), then you are still going to score some hits, most of which will be suffered by the screening units. And a LAC, unfortunately, cannot survive very many hits by warheads that heavy.

I understand all that RFC, really I do, and I know that this entire tactical scenario was cooked up by the Admiralty Knights at the Roundtable; and I'm not even implying that you are guilty by association. It's not like you can watch over your charges all of the time.

It's just that...well...it's the irony of it all! That's what it is, irony...considering all of the advanced technologies of the GA, the insurmountable technological advantage over the SLN that that implies, supported by so many of the greatest tactical thinkers (along with their heads of state) assembled and pondering what amounts to the most profound tactical stance of the GA as of yet, whilst being privy to the enemy's probable approach vector, detailed appreciations, available technology, CO, time of attack, even the name of the operation--in effect the entire enemy's playbook. Yet two thousand died. Alanis Morissette's Ironic is blaring.

I guess I just expected more out of the dream team. If ever there was a time that a spacer would expect to live through it all, would be while under the protective umbrella of so many great tactical thinkers.

I always imagined the greatest strategic and tactical thinkers assembled together on one stage in the Honorverse...my very own dream team if you will. Art gave that to me, yet the result is two thousand dead...and damage to ships?

Even while I was reading it I was wondering, as was Filareta, why Honor's command was just sitting there. I know what they were trying to achieve and also know it would have worked, if it hadn't been for a certain nanotech. But dammit, that's little comfort to the families of those two thousand dead men and women.

A Drivers Ed teacher of mine once told us...
"Remember class, whenever you operate a vehicle you're not just driving for yourself but for all the other idiots on the road as well. In the end it won't matter whose right and whose wrong.

Dead Right or Dead Wrong...you are still dead."

For many officers who had the honor and privilege of being influenced by the great Admiral Couvossier, who gave us poignant little tactical anecdotes like...'surprise is what the other...Oh heck I'm preaching to the choir...had to also have discussed with him the need to CYA. And always ask yourself What if? which in this case would have been "what if the idiot fires if allowed within his own missile range?"

If he didn't, had he lived, I am sure the Admiral would also have said "Surprise is something that happens when you assign too much IQ to the opposition."

Honor's Master Tye parroted it with his (I paraphrase) "It's not the second greatest swordsman the world's best swordsman fears, as he can reason his possible moves. It's the worst swordsman that he fears because he can't determine what the idiot may do."

Throughout the final minutes before going into battle, for both the RMN and the RHN, one question has always been posited..."does anyone see any 'i's not dotted or 't's not crossed?"

I can't imagine anyone not asking "do we really want to allow his arrogance into missile range, because what if the idiot fires anyway?!"

The RMN has much longer ranged missiles, yet they decided to allow an arrogant regime as the SLN to achieve their own missile range, knowing that this is the one regime that under many similar circumstances has exhibited, time after time, that they still may very well fire.

The RMN's missile performance is their backbone. Yet they shelved its main performance hoping that the most arrogant humans in the universe will suddenly forego that arrogance.

IMHO that was irresponsible, and worthy of the scorn Theisman gave Honor about her responsibility to her own spacer's lives!

I acknowledge that only two thousand died where it could have been much worse. But considering RMN's missile reach and reading from the enemy's playbook. I would expect not a single GA spacer dead. Because the GA had the capability to ensure it.

Forgive me RFC, but someone's gonna have to pay for this one.
I'll even accept that demon Murphy as a scapegoat. But trot his ass out here pronto. String him up to a bevy of Apollo missiles and send him straight into a minefield!
IMhO (In My honest Opinion)

****** *

Now for much deserved Harrington-like hero-worship...

David Weber, you are the greatest writer of all time.
It's obvious you are ahead of our time, as you are just visiting us from a prolonged future.

Thanks, lots! and lots!! and LOTS!!!

Here's to you...
Another CHEERS and another broken shot glass.

Any way I can get an autograph sent to my email?!

Considering the number of spacers out at that point in space, even with the 2000 deaths, they were probably safer there than driving down the streets of Landing.

Besides, they were trying to get him to surrender with out any fight what so ever. HE had to know that his ships were in missile range, and nobody in the SLN believes the stupid ranges that those crazy neobarbs are claiming. They were prepared for him to open fire. The LACs were in missile defense positions, and they had planned actions for in case he did.

There were only two things they could have done to assure that no GA spacer died. They could either surrender, or they could have blown the entire fleet out of space with out demanding surrender. Neither of those were an actual option. If you want to demand surrender, you have to be in a believable position to do the demanding. Sitting in orbit around Manticore would have allowed them to attack the SLN fleet, but NOBODY in the fleet would have believed that.

On a side note, did they know that the fleet had Catafract missiles? The RMN knew that the missiles existed, but had only ever seen them on the other side of human space. If that was the case, they may have been out of what they thought was missile range, and most of those 2000 losses were because of the sprint drive.

cthia wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
The Cataphracts have just as much total theoretical range as, say, a Mk. 16. That is, with a suitably long ballistic phase they can eventually reach just about any target the firing ship can see. Will they be very effective? No. Will lots and lots of them be wasted? Assuredly. But if you fire lots and lots and lots and LOTS of them (which Filaretta's fleet did), then you are still going to score some hits, most of which will be suffered by the screening units. And a LAC, unfortunately, cannot survive very many hits by warheads that heavy.

I understand all that RFC, really I do, and I know that this entire tactical scenario was cooked up by the Admiralty Knights at the Roundtable; and I'm not even implying that you are guilty by association. It's not like you can watch over your charges all of the time.

It's just that...well...it's the irony of it all! That's what it is, irony...considering all of the advanced technologies of the GA, the insurmountable technological advantage over the SLN that that implies, supported by so many of the greatest tactical thinkers (along with their heads of state) assembled and pondering what amounts to the most profound tactical stance of the GA as of yet, whilst being privy to the enemy's probable approach vector, detailed appreciations, available technology, CO, time of attack, even the name of the operation--in effect the entire enemy's playbook. Yet two thousand died. Alanis Morissette's Ironic is blaring.

I guess I just expected more out of the dream team. If ever there was a time that a spacer would expect to live through it all, would be while under the protective umbrella of so many great tactical thinkers.

I always imagined the greatest strategic and tactical thinkers assembled together on one stage in the Honorverse...my very own dream team if you will. Art gave that to me, yet the result is two thousand dead...and damage to ships?

Even while I was reading it I was wondering, as was Filareta, why Honor's command was just sitting there. I know what they were trying to achieve and also know it would have worked, if it hadn't been for a certain nanotech. But dammit, that's little comfort to the families of those two thousand dead men and women.

A Drivers Ed teacher of mine once told us...
"Remember class, whenever you operate a vehicle you're not just driving for yourself but for all the other idiots on the road as well. In the end it won't matter whose right and whose wrong.

Dead Right or Dead Wrong...you are still dead."

For many officers who had the honor and privilege of being influenced by the great Admiral Couvossier, who gave us poignant little tactical anecdotes like...'surprise is what the other...Oh heck I'm preaching to the choir...had to also have discussed with him the need to CYA. And always ask yourself What if? which in this case would have been "what if the idiot fires if allowed within his own missile range?"

If he didn't, had he lived, I am sure the Admiral would also have said "Surprise is something that happens when you assign too much IQ to the opposition."

Honor's Master Tye parroted it with his (I paraphrase) "It's not the second greatest swordsman the world's best swordsman fears, as he can reason his possible moves. It's the worst swordsman that he fears because he can't determine what the idiot may do."

Throughout the final minutes before going into battle, for both the RMN and the RHN, one question has always been posited..."does anyone see any 'i's not dotted or 't's not crossed?"

I can't imagine anyone not asking "do we really want to allow his arrogance into missile range, because what if the idiot fires anyway?!"

The RMN has much longer ranged missiles, yet they decided to allow an arrogant regime as the SLN to achieve their own missile range, knowing that this is the one regime that under many similar circumstances has exhibited, time after time, that they still may very well fire.

The RMN's missile performance is their backbone. Yet they shelved its main performance hoping that the most arrogant humans in the universe will suddenly forego that arrogance.

IMHO that was irresponsible, and worthy of the scorn Theisman gave Honor about her responsibility to her own spacer's lives!

I acknowledge that only two thousand died where it could have been much worse. But considering RMN's missile reach and reading from the enemy's playbook. I would expect not a single GA spacer dead. Because the GA had the capability to ensure it.

Forgive me RFC, but someone's gonna have to pay for this one.
I'll even accept that demon Murphy as a scapegoat. But trot his ass out here pronto. String him up to a bevy of Apollo missiles and send him straight into a minefield!
IMhO (In My honest Opinion)

****** *

Now for much deserved Harrington-like hero-worship...

David Weber, you are the greatest writer of all time.
It's obvious you are ahead of our time, as you are just visiting us from a prolonged future.

Thanks, lots! and lots!! and LOTS!!!

Here's to you...
Another CHEERS and another broken shot glass.

Any way I can get an autograph sent to my email?!

Let us look at some numbers here cthia. Filareta and his fleet had approximately 57,000 missiles in his pods. He had 400+ SDs with screen for let's call it 20,000 more missiles of all sizes. So his initial salvo was in the neighborhood of 77,000 missiles. Granted they were staggered and basically blind fired for the most part. He killed 2,000 sailors. That means that (allowing for a crew of 10) he destroyed 200 LACs. That means that he fired 385 missiles for each LAC destroyed. Or, to put it another way, he killed 1 Manticoran spacer for every 39 missiles he fired. In return he lost 1.5 million dead and another million wounded and captured, along with the lose of all his ships.

To quote Mike Tyson: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face".